Some take aways from DMEXCO 2015

Had a great time at DMEXCO, as always. The trade show registered a bit over 40,000 people which is impressive. Also the atmosphere is German meaning ORDNUNG (organized) & GAIL (Cool).
DMEXCO is simply special. I like it! Probably one of the best Digital Advertising events in the world.

This year I saw a slight decline of lets call them Digital Performance players or experts in digital media trading. It just seems as if the Digital Space is reaching some limitation in terms of
volume and that things are getting more crowded.

Its the era when the Brand advertisers are stepping into the arena. Traditional Media is now less than half of the overall Media Spending. In other words, Digital Media is no longer the secret and
lucrative pond with a lot of cheep traffic for performance marketers. The BRAND advertisers are learning how to do the cherry picking themselves using both 1st party DATA or external DATA sources
themselves. They are also investing in powerful & neutral technologies that allows them to avoid duplication with cross devise recognition. Also there is a pressure from the industry to clean NON
HUMAN traffic / FRAUD and then we have the issue with the ADBLOCKERS that in some countries represent a rate as high as 20-30% of the Connected population.

Another interesting thing is to observe the large exposure of GroupM and Dentsu/Aegis at DMEXCO. They seem to have a desire to expose their involvement as a technology player which is interesting if
one compare HAVAS strategy that goes in another direction which is Creativity (see the below summary of HAVAS Yannik Bollore´s speech).

The background noise without any doubt was the word ADBLOCKERS that seems to win positioning in the APP Stores. There were some people rising their eyebrows to this phenomena.

Another thing that was a bit the talk of the town was the resent publications of APPNEXUS and how a high percentage of FRAUD and NON HUMAN traffic was traded through their platform.
Apparently it has gone on for almost a decade :-O

Heineken is not waisting time talking about how to spend more because they spend their energy in how to spend more effective, drive engagement, create stories around their BRAND and how to use the
right platforms. In other words, DIGITAL is marketing, NOT marketing do this and digital do that. The magic is happening when you use the power from different platforms that talk together. The
outcome of this theory is Heineken´s "share the sofa" https://youtu.be/sQdeQpnQZhI

I liked the answer from Heineken around her view on AdBlocking saying that its been around for 50 years with the remote control! :-)

The Future of the
Agency Holding Company (press the Image to see the Video)

Yannick Bolloré from HAVAS. Inspirational speech indeed.

Yannick is saying that if you are smaller you also adapt faster. Small in the sense of breaking the barriers between creative, media buying and Digital.

Yannick said that HAVAS combine all of this, but the key on what they are doing is Creativity. Its HAVAS core business. In order to obtain attention in a fragmented media channel world the creative
piece is important. Example of creative ads press here

The reason why HAVAS is being so successful and that they are still growing is that they have understood that the math people should only be there to help Creative people and therefore HAVAS should
NOT be considered a technology company. Also read : The Golden Triangle , that explains a bit about my view concerning the roles of the important actors in the digital advertising landscape.

AdBlock is a fact. Top APPs in the iOS 9 are AdBlockers, that will really cause a big fire in the Digital Advertising industry. AdBlock kills Content & Publishers cannot monetize with the effect
that content will go away. The solution is to ask the consumers, with the engagement of the publishers, on how they feel they should compensate of their content, either with BRANDED content (ADS that
are of interest) or subscription modules or some sort of mix. The last alternative will be FREE content but to shut of the AdBlocker and choose to view advertising.

Ben said that its important that the ADVERTISERS improves creativity and create a story behind the BRAND but more important that there is a communication between the content generators and the
users.

All in all seemed to me that Mr Barokas has some sort of idea to make his second great Startup (or might be third or forth) :-)

What BRAND wants
(press the image to see the Video).

Great moderation from IABs Lisa Milgren (@lisamilgram141) with very good questions to the guests (Jessica Federer, Karl Isaac, Lindsay Pattison). Lets say that the questions atleast to me raise the importance around the
need of applying CONSULTING, LEARNING, AND UNDERSTANDING around DATA in the digital advertising space. At DMEXCO there were 40,000 people attending with almost 900 booths. A normal BRAND how will
they figure out all of this, specially now when Technological Platforms with DATA is doing + 30% trading on programmatic basis? What is pretty clear to me is that the Agencies has lost focus on what
they are good at which should be creativity & promotional knowledge, NOT TECHNOLOGY (going back to the CEO of HAVAS).

NOTE: look at the debate and I am pretty sure that there was no concrete answers on what BRANDS want and how TECHNOLOGY will help them (and how to partner with them)

Lets see what topics will be HOT next year, but right NOW, which essentially is the only important thing, is that DMEXCO made me fired up to reach out to the Advertisers to understand their NEEDs and
see how TECHNOLOGY can help them in the process.